


What's in a name?

by Silvestria



Category: The London Life (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, Literary References, References to Shakespeare, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 16:37:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6914926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvestria/pseuds/Silvestria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viola and Olivia talk books, boys and babies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's in a name?

Monday 15th April 1811  
  
“MORTIMER! _Mortimer?_ ”  
  
Viola buried herself more deeply in her bed clothes.  
  
“Are you listening to me, Viola? Mortimer!”  
  
The covers were dragged off her and she blinked in the sudden light from where the hangings round her bed had been pulled apart. Olivia was standing by her head, fully dressed and waving some paper in her face.  
  
“Why do you keep saying ‘Mortimer’ like that?” she mumbled. Was it really morning? Surely it was only a few hours since she had gone to bed after the Emerson Ball.  
  
“Because that’s what they’re calling him! I mean, _Mortimer_ of all things!”  
  
“What? Who?” asked Viola, blinking and feeling bemused. She wanted to return to that nice dream she had been having. She could not now remember what it was about but she felt sure it had been nice.  
  
Olivia flung herself down on the bed besides her sister. “Your new nephew, of course! Who did you think? It’s all in this morning’s Society News!”  
  
“What?” Viola sat up and grabbed the paper.  
  
  


 _Those who frequent Town regularly during the Season must necessarily lament the absence of Lord and Lady Surrey and their charming and intimate dinner parties. However, this author hopes that Lady Surrey will be forgiven when Society understands the reason for her absence. A source close to the family has the pleasure of announcing the safe arrival early on Sunday morning at the Surreys’ Cheshire Estate of_ Mortimer Richard Fitzgerald _, a second son to the Viscount and his wife and a brother to the Honourable Henry and Madeleine Fizgerald. The whole family is reported to be doing well. Lord Surrey’s sisters Ladies Viola and Olivia Fitzgerald and Lady Surrey’s cousin Miss Blakeney are all in Town and must be congratulated on the good news._

  
Viola felt herself smile even as she closed her eyes and silently murmured a prayer of thanksgiving. “How wonderful. I am so glad,” she said out loud.  
  
“But they called him Mortimer, Viola! I daresay that was Cordelia’s doing- Richard would never have picked such an asinine name. Mortimer!”  
  
“Do be quiet, Livia! You sound like a parrot. What’s wrong with Mortimer anyway?”  
  
Olivia stared at her. “ _La Mort_. Mortification. You really have to ask? Nobody in their right mind would call their son Mortimer.”  
  
Viola laughed. “Well, I quite like it. And it goes well with Fitzgerald which is important. So many names do not.”  
  
“Such as?”  
  
“Well.” Viola thought for a moment, flopping down onto her back again. “Phillip Fitzgerald. Francis Fitzgerald. Ezekiel Zachariah Fitzgerald- he’s the Methodist one, of course.”  
  
“Of course he is!” Olivia giggled. “Gerald Fitzgerald.”  
  
“That would be an unfortunate name indeed, though I think there was one once. You should be thankful, dearest, that Richard and Cordelia settled on something as sensible as Mortimer.”  
  
Olivia sighed. “Perhaps. But I still don’t like it and I don’t see how you can. Where did they get it from anyway? Nobody was ever called Mortimer that I heard of!”  
  
“Mr. Delvile was.”  
  
“Oh, of course he was! Huh. I never liked him. He abandoned Cecilia in her hour of need. I like my heroes heroic.”  
  
“And your babies named after them?” enquired Viola, much amused. “I daresay you think they should have called him Valancourt Vivaldi Fitzgerald.”  
  
“Viola! I would never be so cruel! Besides, if Mortimer Delvile is bad, then Valancourt is much, much worse. A real hero wouldn’t have left Emily to languish all that time in Udolpho while he was amusing himself in the gaming parlours of Paris.” Olivia paused. “Emily should have married Count Morano.”  
  
Viola nodded, though she was not sure that any marriage between that pair would have been very happy. “He is certainly far more attractive than poor Chevalier Valancourt to be sure, even if he does attempt to ravish Emily on several occasions,” she finished drily.  
  
Olivia waved the problem away with her hand. “Who would you name _your_ son after then, Viola?”  
  
“Oh, I don’t expect I shall have any children, Liv.”  
  
“Of course you shall. So, what will you call him?”  
  
Viola tilted her head and considered the question. She tried not to think about names for children since children required marriage and that was something she did not expect to have. And yet when she had been a few years younger she had sometimes imagined having a daughter. She would have called her Miranda, because she would be. Admired, that was. She would have beautiful brown eyes that were alight with intelligence and Viola would enjoy chaperoning her. She did not think of sons. Sons tended to take after their father and it was hard to imagine them without imagining a husband for herself, something she knew to be a waste of time.  
  
“I expect I shall leave the naming of my son to my husband.”  
  
“Pfft, why so reticent, Vi? I know what you’d call him anyway.”  
  
“What then?”  
  
“Benedick.” At her sister’s stare Olivia looked very pleased with herself. “You still have the back of the programme with the etching of James Denton on it from when we saw _Much Ado_ at Harrogate. Ha! You’re blushing!”  
  
Viola pressed her face into the pillow. “I am not! And besides, shouldn’t I then name my son James not Benedick, if it was the actor I admired so much and not the character?”  
  
Olivia poked her in the shoulder. “You have always said, and very defensively too, that it was the character you were in love with, so do not contradict me now you prefer to be out of love! And if it pleases you to imagine Signor Benedick with the broad shoulders and curly black hair of Mr. Denton, then who am I to stop you?”  
  
Viola removed her face from the pillow and pursed her lips. “Quite so. I shall imagine him exactly as I please! And he is a very good actor!”  
  
“Of course he is. He even made me like a hero who addresses his lady as Lady Disdain. So many women love Benedick best of Shakespeare’s heroes that it is really a cliché!”  
  
“Of course we do; he’s a very attractive character,” coolly replied Viola, who thrilled every time Benedick (whether played by the handsome Mr. Denton or not) said that he would rather hear his dog bark at a crow than a woman swear she loved him, only to be brought to say that he would challenge Claudio for Beatrice. Not that she had any intention of telling her sister this.  
  
Olivia smiled as if she knew precisely what Viola was thinking. “Perhaps. I could never really see it though, especially when we saw that performance and I was only fifteen. I know perfectly well of course that antagonism and hatred is a sign of true love for many people, but I have always thought that it should have a kinder basis.”  
  
Viola grinned at her. “So you would dare to be different from all of us dull women who love Benedick? You are an original thinker indeed, Livia! Who would you place above him? Not Romeo!”  
  
“Lord, no, not Romeo!” She rested her head on her hand and stared horizontally at her sister across the pillow with unseeing eyes. After a moment of thought she said, “Orlando. I like Orlando best.”  
  
Viola raised an eyebrow. “Whatever for? Apart from getting mauled by a lion in a most heroic fashion, of course.”  
  
Olivia continued to stare. Then her lips curved into a mischievous smile. She sat up abruptly. “He writes the most divinely bad poetry. There is something wonderful about truly awful poetry.”  
  
Viola actually snorted. “You strange creature! How absurd!”  
  
“I wish someone would write me bad poetry.” She wondered if Will Devenish had ever written poetry and immediately dismissed it. Of course he had not. He had an estate to run- which he did very well. That was far more important than mere literature. And yet…  
  
“You won’t after half a season of being pursued by half-wits,” Viola interrupted her thoughts.  
  
Olivia ignored her, lost in a dream. “I could help him out by suggesting some really awful rhymes. It would be a work of art!”  
  
Viola wondered if Lady Rosalind Fairmont had ever had the misfortune to be courted by someone who fancied themselves so much a wit as to reproduce Orlando’s poems verbatim for her. Or possibly nail them to her front door. She decided to ask her next time they met.  
  
“Not one that you would ever wish to publish, I think!”  
  
“No.” Olivia sighed with mock disappointment. “After all, nothing rhymes with Olivia! Palavar almost works, but is less than satisfactory.”  
  
“Simón Bolívar?” suggested Viola facetiously, “and I should like to read any poem that managed to feature the two of you- an epic romance, I fancy, in fifty-seven stanzas and featuring an extended description of the vegetation of Venezuela in the style of Mrs. Radcliffe.”  
  
Olivia jumped off the bed in haste. “Oh, I shall start work on it this instant! It will be sublimely horrid!”  
  
She paced up and down. “We met last season in a crowded ballroom.” She looked across at Viola who nodded encouragingly. “He asked me to dance. It was love at first sight. But it was not to be!”  
  
“Oh no, why not?!”  
  
Olivia dramatically struck the back of her hand against her forehead. “Duty compelled him to return to South America. I clung to him, my tears wetting his cravat, I vowed I would follow him, I vowed my love was eternal, but he would have none of it.”  
  
Viola raised a finger, deepened her voice and spoke in a heavy Italian accent since she did not really know what a Spanish one sounded like. “A long sea journey and the wilds of South America are no place for a beautiful lady like yourself!”  
  
Olivia rushed back across the room and flung herself on her knees by the bed and clasped her hands together. “Oh, Mr. Bolívar! Never say that! To be only in your company, what care I for foreign climes, for civil war, for sea sickness and for rations of dry toast! Would to heaven that you might believe that without your love, without marriage to you… I die! I perish! I am no more!”  
  
Viola sniffed and whipped her head round. “No more for me! Madam, detain me no longer, for destiny calls me across the sea. My fate it is to sail alone to the unknown…” She was unable to keep her face straight any more. “And to refound Troy in the Ausonian Land!”  
  
Olivia collapsed as well and they laughed together. Then she knelt back up on the floor, attempted to wipe the mirth off her face and continued, “The heartless Bolívar sails away of course, but I am no Queen of Carthage! No funeral pyre for Lady Olivia, no indeed! I disguise myself in boy’s garments, man my own ship and sail across the Atlantic with none but a scurvy cabin boy and a talking monkey for companions. A storm attacks my vessel and I am swept up all alone on the shore of a new land. At which point, I wail-”  
  
“‘And what should I do in Illyria?’” interrupted Viola innocently.  
  
“Yes!” giggled Olivia. “And then… and then I have no idea what happens. Complications ensue. There will be running around, sword fighting, mistaken identity and hiding in closets, that I do know!”  
  
“Are you sure, dearest, that you are still writing an epic poem of doomed romance?”  
  
Olivia shrugged. “Not really. Doomed romance is so dull when it is not funny. I shall entitle it, ‘Olivia, the South American Adventuress; A _Mélodrame_ ,’ and shall publish it in three volumes. It will be wildly popular.”  
  
Viola smiled. “I’m sure it will.”  
  
There was a moment of silence while Olivia got up off the floor and sat back down on the bed, still grinning. Then Viola caught her sister’s hand said softly, “Talking about doomed love, I don’t think that people who really hate each other do fall in love very often, Livia. If they seem antagonistic it is probably because they are denying their feelings for each other, not because they really, truly dislike each other.”  
  
Olivia rolled her eyes and pulled her hand away. “Lord, you do like to preach sometimes! I was hardly being serious. I am rarely serious.”  
  
Viola stared down at the bed and half smiled. “I just don’t want you to go through the season thinking that every couple you see who don’t appear to like each other are secretly in love with each other.”  
  
Olivia raised her eyebrows. “I’m not _stupid_ ; so just one or two then?”  
  
Viola knew better than to be vexed at her sister’s resistance to hearing good advice. Probably she should not have tried to give any. “Just one or two! Not that it’s a subject I think about very much of course.”  
  
“Oh, that I can tell,” replied Olivia sardonically, and wondered who precisely she had in mind.  
  
Viola only rolled her eyes and then peered through the gaps in her bed curtains. “Is it very late, Liv? Or did you just wake me up out of spite? I do usually sleep quite late after a ball.”  
  
“Not so very late by town standards, but Aunt Dorothy and Charlie are already up.”  
  
Viola’s eyes widened and she pushed her sister off the bed and clambered out taking one of the sheets part of the way with her. Her hands went to her hair which tumbled loose down her back. “Ring the bell for Caroline, will you?” She yawned and stretched.  
  
Olivia did so and asked, “What are we doing today? Shall I meet some more of your friends?”  
  
“Actually,” replied Viola, “I was thinking we might make some duty calls on family today. I haven’t seen Uncle John Fitzgerald since I got to Town and considering the good news from Cheshire, it would be a nice thought to call on the Blakeneys. Sophia is in her second season so it would be beneficial for you, I think, if we were to sustain the connection.”  
  
Olivia, who was inclined to think all the Blakeneys as bad as the one who had married her brother, groaned. “Must we? They’re not our family, not really!”  
  
“I think we must; but if we call there first we can spend most of the day with the Fitzgeralds and I dare say Lucy will be most impressed when you tell her all about the Emerson Ball.”  
  
Olivia brightened. “I say, that’s true enough!” Cousin Lucy was only a year younger than she was and they got on well whenever they met at Christmases and the odd summer holiday though neither made any effort to sustain the friendship in between visits by correspondence. Olivia imagined how impressed Lucy, who had no fortune to speak of and would only have a season the following year if one of her grand titled relations sponsored her, would be to hear of her conquests and dissipation.  
  
“All right, Viola. We’ll do that.” They met in the middle of the room. “But tomorrow can we please meet people we’re not related to?”  
  
Viola laughed and gently poked her sister on the nose. “Tomorrow, dearest, you shall be practising your Beethoven and I shall be writing programmes for the soirée!”  
  
Olivia scowled. “The Beethoven is harder than the Clementi. I wish you could have got that Miss Staunton to change piece instead of me.”  
  
“That would hardly be civil. And I also want you to accompany me in my arias.”  
  
The scowl changed to a look of horror. “But those Mozart pieces are fast! Accompany yourself!”  
  
Viola sighed. “But I’m accompanying almost everyone else as it is. I’ve not asked you to play for a stranger. Can’t you manage two arias that you have played before with me?”  
  
“Playing them through with you at home is quite a different matter to performing in front of all of society, Viola. They know nothing of me except to compare me with you. I don’t perform well in public like you do and they can only be disappointed when they hear me. There’s no need to ruin your performance as well as my own. I know I am perfectly dreadful at music.” She paused. “I just never cared before now; now when you are making my debut a musical soirée!”  
  
Viola opened her mouth then shut it again. She wanted to howl that if Olivia had not continually changed her mind about whether and when she would come to London she would not have arranged the event for the week of her arrival. Instead she merely began to say that Olivia was not dreadful at music and that if she only did more practice- when Olivia interrupted her, enjoying the opportunity to complain.  
  
“And I don’t see why I can’t have a ball for my debut, like Miss Pritchard and Miss Hampton had. That’s what _normal_ families have!”  
  
“Do you really expect Aunt Dorothy to give you a ball on top of everything else she is doing for us?” snapped Viola.  
  
“She’d do it if we asked her.”  
  
“And we are not going to ask her.”  
  
Olivia changed tack. “If Mama were here then we would have a ball. _You_ had a ball!”  
  
Viola tried to be patient. “Mama can’t be here right now. Her place is with Richard, Cordy and the baby. You must see that.” Just thinking about her newest nephew made her excited. She knew she probably would not be able to meet him until the end of the season but just knowing that he was there and both him and Cordelia were, all being well, in good health was such a relief.  
  
“But I’m her daughter!” cried Olivia. “And it’s my season.”  
  
“And Cordy has no mother of her own. Be generous. I’m sure Mama will come to London as soon as she is able and will give you the ball you want.” Mentally she made a note to write a very forceful letter to her mother as soon as she could explaining to her the vital importance of her attending the season and giving Olivia a ball. Lady Rotherham’s personal dislike of London should not cause her daughter to be deprived of her rightful opportunities.  
  
Olivia looked down and bit her lip. She knew she was being childish but it was so hard not to be when Miss Hampton and Miss Pritchard had had such a glorious evening for their debut and her parents did not even bother to come to London, baby or no baby. At least Cassandra would understand how she felt. And it was wrong to take it out on poor Viola who was always so self contained and never showed anyone how she really felt and tried to be so strong and clearly did not understand herself at all, but perhaps if Viola had done her duty and married when she should have done then her parents would be keener to launch her sister in society. Not that Olivia really needed a season, being already engaged to be married, but since she was having one she wanted a proper one. And her parents did not know she was engaged so that was hardly an argument, was it? Sometimes life could be rather confusing.  
  
Then she felt warm arms reach for her and she felt Viola embrace her and pull her close.  
  
“I’m here,” said Viola into Olivia’s neck, “and I’ll always be here; and I shall make sure you have the best season it is possible to have.”  
  
She squeezed back. “Better than everyone else, Vi?”  
  
“Better than them all. And then better still. I promise.”  
  
Olivia grinned into her sister’s hair. “I’m glad you’re here.”


End file.
